SF navigation widget with own skin

Hi there

I just waisted a whole day trying to style a sf navigation menu with my own skin. I have a ticket on stylebuilder but wanted to see what your experiance was.

No reply here so I try it again http://www.sitefinity.com/devnet/forums/sitefinity-4-x/suggestions/navigatioin-control-enhancements-for-4-2.aspx

1) Why is there no Vertical Menu with flyout to the right? (Am I missing it or is SF missing it)
2) Do you ever get lucky styling your own skin with Stylebuilder. I am either really really dumb or stylebuilder has a mind of its own?
3) is SF somehow interacting with my custom skins? I seen in another post that it sould not be the case but if you look at the image attached I am not so sure.
4) Why is the vertical menu done with tab and not with a menu. I guess the two most common would be menu on top with flyout and menu on side with flyout. If both would be radMenu you only had to build one (PITN* skin with Sylebuilder)
5) If you have a page group and one single page under it that redirects to another page this page groups seem not to get included in the navigation.

Hope to get some answers here.

Regards Markus

*Pain In The Neck (beeing polite)
 

Hi Markus,

I am really sorry about the loss of time you had and I hope this information will be of help to you.

1) Vertical menu uses RadTabStrip control to display the menu. To achieve right flyout you could either do it with separating your page template layout ( if it`s ok with you ) or create a custom navigation that uses RadTabstrip control with the property you require like described here.

2) I hope this forum topic will help you with your Stylebuilder troubles.

3) Styling Sitefinity navigation with your skin might provide some conflicts with your css and the css of the Sitefinity current theme as you have shown in your screenshot ( some properties get overwritten ). To avoid this I suggest using your own theme or just blank theme.

4) We apologize for the inconvenience this causes you, but currently RadTabStrip uses tabs. If you need to use menu`s consider some other control like RadTreeView if it suits your expectations.
 
5) Does the attached screenshot (page_group.png) describes the situation you are talking about. Please provide me with more information on this problem.

I hope this information was helpful and feel free to write back if you got any more problems.

All the best,
Stanislav Velikov
the Telerik team

Dear Stanislav

1) Why is the Vertical menu not solved with RadMenu orientation Vertical. So you would have to design only one skin and if you just want the top you could set the node to include only top. - does that not make sense??

2) My troubles are not making a skin work. But making the acutall skins. Some stuff is simply not provided to be made in stylebuilder and again it behaves strange. If anyone tells me what the prevered browser is to use on win xp I more then glad to show you what I mean with screencasts

3) I use my own theme and still SF seems to be overriding styles

4) No need to appologize for RadTabStrip using Tabs. I mean thats what RadTapStrip is supposed to do :-) but see 1) why use TabStrips in the first place

5) Create two pagegroups, and one page under each group. Page 1 is real SF 1 page, Page 2 is simply a page that redirects to Page 1. Check if PageGroup2 and Page2 are shown in SF Navigation.

PageGroup 1
Page 1
Page Group 2
Page 2 -> is a redirect Page to Page1

Kind regards Markus

Hi Markus,

1) Yes its true that designing only one skin is more productive and makes more sense and in that direction we are currently preparing to make big changes to the navigation widget so it will be capable of doing what you require and even more.

2) Stylebuilder is related to winforms and I hope the ticket you mention have sent to them really help you with this issue.

3) The overwrite happens to conflicting declarations that are used by either the theme and the widget. I can only advise you to go trough the conflicting declarations with firebug.

4) As mentioned in the answer to your first question this is about to go trough revisions.

5) I have tested your scenario and the PageGroup2 appears in navigation altough Page2 which redirects to Page1 is renamed to Page1 which is a know bug and will be addressed in one of the coming internal builds.



Kind regards,
Stanislav Velikov
the Telerik team